Decoding the College Football Playoff Bracket

The College Football Playoff (CFP) is an annual invitational tournament that determines the national champion for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). This is the highest level of college football competition in the United States. The tournament culminates in the College Football Playoff National Championship game.

A Brief History of the CFP

The inaugural tournament was held at the end of the 2014 NCAA Division I FBS football season under a four-team format. From its formation in 2014 to the end of the 2023 season, the College Football Playoff used a four-team knockout bracket to determine the national champion.

Prior to the CFP's inception in 2014, the NCAA did not organize or award an official national championship for FBS football. Instead, it merely recognized the decisions made by any of a number of independent major championship selectors. The CFP marked the first time a major national championship selector in college football was able to determine their champion by using a bracket competition.

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS)

Before the CFP, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was the title system used in FBS from 1998 to 2013. The BCS rankings originally incorporated the two major polls as well as a number of computer ranking systems to determine the two best teams at the end of the season.

However, the winnowing selection of the top two teams resulted in many BCS controversies, most notably 2003's split national championship caused by the BCS rankings leaving USC, No. 1 in both major polls, out of the Sugar Bowl. This controversy ultimately led to the AP Poll withdrawing from the BCS, and additional fine-tuning of the BCS formula.

The Evolution to a Playoff

As the years passed, public pressure for a playoff grew, especially following seasons in which there were split national championships in the polls. By the 1990s, the sport underwent several changes that led to a playoff. The 1992 SEC Championship Game was an enormous risk that paid off well for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) that year and in future years and gave a glimpse at what post-season football might look like.

FBS schools also began making changes to bowl games themselves in the 1990s to increase the likelihood of having the top two ranked teams play each other. However, existing bowl tie-ins with conferences made arrangements such as the Bowl Coalition (1992-1994) and then Bowl Alliance (1995-1997) clumsy and incomplete at best.

The CFP Era Begins

In 2014, the College Football Playoff made its debut, facilitating a multi-game single-elimination tournament for the first time in college football history.

Expansion to 12 Teams

The CFP Board of Managers voted in 2023 to expand the playoff to 12 teams beginning in 2024, an arrangement that will last at least through the end of the 2026 season. From the beginning of the CFP, many within college football wanted a playoff larger than four teams. Several years of the 4-team playoff led to growing calls for expansion.

In June 2021, the CFP announced that it would begin studying an expansion to a 12-team playoff. On February 18, 2022, the CFP rejected the playoff proposal that had seemed to have already won approval, largely through resistance of the Atlantic Coast Conference. This pushed implementation of any changes to the playoff pool to no sooner than the 2026 season.

Read also: Crafting Your NCAA Profile

However, that decision was reversed on September 2, 2022, following the announcement by USC and UCLA that they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. The "alliance" between the ACC, Pac-12, and Big Ten dissolved, and along with it resistance to playoff expansion. Conferences and bowls negotiated early expansion for several months during the fall of 2022.

How the 12-Team Playoff Works

Now, 12 teams will be selected to the Playoff field, with some teams earning automatic bids from the selection committee. The current 12-team CFP format features, for the first time, a first round of playoffs separated from bowl games. The first round consists of seeds 5 through 12 playing one another at the home stadium of the better seeded teams, or another venue of their choice.

Selection Committee

A 13-member committee has selected and seeded the teams to take part in the CFP. This system differs from the use of polls or computer rankings that had previously been used to select the participants for the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the title system used in FBS from 1998 to 2013.

The Selection Committee members will meet weekly to produce rankings. The committee’s rankings will be announced on ESPN.

The committee members include one current athletic director from each of the four major conferences-ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC-also known as the Power conferences. Other members are former coaches, players, athletic directors, and administrators, plus a retired member of the media.

Selection Process

The CFP Selection Committee is responsible for determining the top 12 teams that will make up the CFP. The CFP Selection Committee is also responsible for creating the ranking of the top 25 teams, which is updated and released six or seven times per season. Members of the CFP Selection Committee are chosen by the CFP Management Committee. The CFP Management Committee is composed of 10 Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) conference commissioners as well as the Notre Dame athletic director.

Starting in the middle of the NCAAF regular season, all 13 CFP Selection Committee members meet on a weekly basis to deliver a new top 25 poll. Each meeting consists of a multi-step voting process with seven total rounds of ranking. All votes are conducted by secret ballot and each round is broken up by committee discussion. Once a voting session is complete, an updated CFP ranking is unveiled on the following Tuesday.

The committee's voting method uses multiple ballots, similar to the NCAA basketball tournament selection process and the entire process is facilitated through custom software developed by Code Authority in Frisco, Texas. From a large initial pool of teams, the group takes numerous votes on successive tiers of teams, considering six at a time and coming to a consensus on how they should be ranked, then repeating the process with the next tier of teams. Discussion and debate happens at each voting step.

Recusal Policy

Committee members who are currently employed or financially compensated by a school, or have family members who have a current financial relationship (which includes football players), are not allowed to vote for that school. During deliberations about a team's selection, members with such a conflict of interest cannot be present, but can answer factual questions about the institution. All committee members have past ties to certain NCAA institutions, but the committee decided to ignore those ties in the recusal requirements.

Seeding and First Round

The Selection Committee’s seed list determines the 12-team postseason tournament bracket, which consists of the six-highest ranked conference champions and the six-highest ranked non-conference champions. In a format change, the four highest-ranked teams overall receive a bye while the remaining eight play for the last four quarterfinal slots.

The four highest-ranked schools will be seeded one through four and will receive a first-round bye. The remaining schools will be seeded 5-12 based on their final ranking. The eight schools seeded No. 5-12 will play in the CFP First Round with the higher seeds hosting the lower seeds either on campus or at other sites designated by the higher-seeded institution (No. 12 at No. 5, No. 11 at No. 6, No. 10 at No. 7 and No. 9 at No. 8).

Quarterfinals and Semifinals

The CFP selection committee will assign the four highest-ranked schools to Playoff Quarterfinals hosted by bowls. This will be done in consideration of historic bowl relationships, then in consideration of rankings. For example, if the Sugar Bowl hosts a Playoff Quarterfinal and an SEC school is ranked No. 1 and a Big 12 schools is ranked No. 2, the committee will assign the No. 1 seed to the Sugar Bowl and the No. 2 seed to another Playoff Quarterfinal.

With the four highest-ranked schools assigned to bowls, their four Playoff Quarterfinal opponents will be dictated by the bracket (i.e., No. 1 vs. No. 8/9 winner, No. 4 vs. No. 5/12 winner, No. 2 vs. 7/10 winner; No. 3 vs. 6/11 winner).

The quarterfinals and semifinals rotate among six bowls: Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Rose and Sugar. Both semifinals will be played around the New Year's holiday with the national title game on a Monday night at least a week later.

New Year's Six Bowls

The CFP quarterfinal and semifinal games rotate annually between three sets of longstanding bowl games known as the New Year’s Six (a.k.a. “NY6”). Named for their traditional holiday schedule, the NY6 bowl game pairs are the Peach Bowl in Atlanta and the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix; the Orange Bowl in Miami and the Cotton Bowl in Dallas; and, finally, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

The New Year’s Six bowl games are the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl. Although all six games were historically held on or around December 31 and January 1, the schedule extended to mid-January when the postseason field expanded to 12 teams.

Key Dates for the CFP

Here are some important dates to keep in mind for the College Football Playoff:

First Round: Week of Saturday, December
- One game: Friday, December
- Three games: Saturday, December
Fiesta Bowl: Wednesday, December
Cotton Bowl: Friday, January
Rose Bowl: Friday, January
Peach Bowl: Friday, January
Orange Bowl: Thursday, January
Sugar Bowl: Friday, January
CFP National Championship Game: Monday, January

Impact of the 12-Team Playoff

The expansion to a 12-team playoff has several implications for college football:

Strength of Schedule: Strength of schedule will become such an important factor. Due to the increased emphasis on strength of schedule, teams have considered playing more challenging opponents during the non-conference portion of their schedules. Some teams have traditionally played three or four "weak" non-conference opponents, but wins against such low-level competition are unlikely to impress the committee.
Conference Schedules: Teams in the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 play nine conference games on their twelve-game schedules and thus only have flexibility in choosing their opponents for the three non-league games. In response to the new playoff system, the Southeastern Conference considered increasing its conference schedule from eight to nine games, with Alabama coach Nick Saban a vocal proponent.
Increased Access: The 12-team playoff provides more opportunities for teams from different conferences to compete for the national championship. This is especially beneficial for teams outside of the Power Five conferences, as it gives them a better chance to prove themselves on a national stage.

tags: #ncaa #football #playoff #bracket #explained